Category Archives: The Pogues

Hi folks. This post is my pre-Christmas post in this blog, about 3 of my favourite Christmas songs. The one thing they have in common is that they are not traditional Christmas carols and are original songs written by the artists. Something else they have in common is that they are not necessarily well known by the mainstream and only to the audience of the band and or radio format they are played on.
The first song on my list is Thank God It’s Christmas by Queen, which is written by guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor. This song was released in December 1984 at the end of The Works’s album cycle and it has appeared on a couple of Queen albums since. The most recent appearance is on the 2011 Deluxe version of The Works. I had performed it in 1992, with my best friend Bob Reid at our school and it went over well.
Fairytale of New York by The Pogues is my second choice as one of my favourites. I had actually heard it for the first time, during Christmas 1995 and it didn’t really catch on with me, until some time in the last 7 years or so when I had heard it on more radio stations and recently read about the song on Wikipedia. It’s the second least known of my choices but I like it because of the dialog in the song and the fact that the woman refers to the man as “you scumbag you Magette, you cheap lousy faggot” probably referring to the man’s drunkenness.
My third choice and the least known for sure, of all three songs is x-M@$ by Corey Taylor of Slipknot and Stone Sour. It was release in 2010 as a Christmas single, with any money from sails going to charity. In the song, The protagonist is a man who hates Christmas and all that goes with it and would rather be drunk or stoned on this Yuletide holiday. There are even a few four letter words in the song and a clean version was also produced for radio and for people who would be offended.
To those who would expect a more traditional song from Corey, I say that it isn’t surprising that he wrote a song for those who hate Christmas and also, Corey plays music that is subversive and is not for the Grandma’s and Grandpa’s of the world. It’s for the younger croud of 50 and under who would get that the song is not a serious hatred of Christmas tune, from the singer. I’ve heard that Corey actually likes Christmas and I believe him. I’ve met him and despite him throwing people out of Slipknot shows and throwing water on people, who are texting during the concert, I have nothing bad to say about him. He was great to me and we had Tim Hortons coffee together and he had it black and I had a double-double.
I have other songs which I could have chosen but I will leave them for future Christmas posts. If you want to hear any of the three I have listed here, you can find all three on Youtube and I will leave that to you to look for them. Have a great Christmas and a happy and healthy 2017.